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Declaration of War in Kenya
by The Revolutionary Peasants and Workers of the Mau Mau Resistance

When the war was declared in 1952
Our country was turned into a huge prison.
Innocent people, men, women and children,
Were herded into concentration camps,
Under all kinds of harsh repression.

Kenyan patriots were arrested and killed,
Thousands of others were subjected
To slow death in Manyani
And Mackinnon Road concentration camps.

KAU leaders were arrested
And taken to Kapenguria
Where they faced a Kangaroo court.

Large-scale massacres of our people
Were committed across the country.
Meanwhile Kimathi in Nyandarwa called for total mobilization,
He told the people to unite and fight
These foreign murderers with heroism
And drive them out of the country.

Our Independent schools, the people's schools,
Were turned into gallows
Where many of our compatriots
Experienced untold suffering and death.

Our livestock were confiscated
And our crops in the fields were destroyed.
All public markets were closed down
And all people's newspapers were banned.

Thousands of patriotic women
Were locked up in prisons.
Many of them, with their children,
Were put into concentration camps
Where they suffered all kinds of brutal tortures.

Later the colonialists employed
Vast numbers of Kenyans who took up rifles
To fight as mercenaries in opposition to the Motherland,
To kill and torture their own compatriots
Leaving behind countless widows and orphans.

In spite of harsh enemy repression,
The revolutionary flame was maintained and developed.
And people's hatred toward the British oppressors
Grew from day to day,
And proudly they declared:
'It would be better to die on our feet
Than to live on our knees.'